Near-Death Puzzles

A Review of Bruce Greyson's After

Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, tells us that he first started thinking about near-death experiences many decades ago, when a young woman, rescued from suicide, asserted that she had seen a spaghetti stain on his tie during an out-of-body experience. She could not have known that he had gone to considerable pains to conceal the embarrassing mark from his colleagues.

Nothing in his background had prepared him, as a young psychiatrist, for taking seriously the possibility that the mind could be detached from the brain. He grew up with a chemist father who had a great love for science but no metaphysical convictions. But he just could not forget the spaghetti stain episode, and that...